You were not present this morning, but be careful that you are in the future." Rachel's grief over her own situation had been swallowed up by indignation at the Surgeon's brutality to others.

All her higher instincts were on fire at the gratuitous insults to boys, toward whom her womanly sympathies streamed out.

The pugnacious element, large in hers as in all strong natures, asserted itself and invited to the fray.
If there was no one else to resist this petty tyrant she would, and mayhap in this she might find such exercise of her heroic qualities that she felt were within her, as would justify herself in her own esteem.
She met with a resolute glance his peevish eyes, and said; "When the rules are communicated to me in a proper manner, I shall take care to obey them, if they are just and proper; but I will not be spoken to in that way by any man." His eyes fell from the encounter with hers, and the dull mottle in his cheek became crimson with a blush at this assertion of outraged womanly dignity.

He turned away, saying gruffly: "Just as I expected.

The moment a woman comes into the hospital, all discipline is at an end." He moved off angrily.